A short, powerful text that is a call for peace and a reminder of the hypocrisy and horror of war from one of France’s greatest thinkers.

“The war in Ukraine has brought back the terrible memories of WWII. The massive destruction, destroyed cities, the carcasses of gutted buildings, the countless deaths of soldiers and civilians, the influx of refugees… I am once again living through the the war crimes, the absolute Manichaeism, the misleading propaganda.

And so I was reminded all of the common traits of all of the wars that I have known — the Algerian War, the Yugoslav Vars, the Iraq War. I have written this book so that the lessons of the past 80 years of history can help us to confront the present with clarity, to understand the urgency of finding peace and to avoid the worst tragedy of a new world war.”

Edgar Morin, sociologist, philosopher, is one of the greatest thinkers of our time. At the age of 101, he decided to write this book in response to the war in Ukraine.